Finding UN Materials

Elizabeth Wells Bodleian Law Library November 2009

This session UN Publication or UN Document Numbers & Symbols 5 databases

Press release Un-i-que UN documentation centre UN’s ODS UNBisnet

Some useful URLS for Research guides UN news & current awareness

UN paperwork

TreatiesResolutions

and decisions

Press releases

Voting records

Speeches

Annual reports

Reports from UN organs and their subsidiary bodies, missions…

Publications aimed at the public

Statistics

Minutes of meetings

Draft documents

Country reportsICJ decisions and opinions

ICJ statutes & other docs

Sorting UN Publications from UN Documents

UN Publications“Sales publications”

intended for public consumption

e.g. UN Yearbooks

Press releases

Dolly the Sheep facing her public

Numbers: Sales Publications Unique combination of letters and

numbers E.07.III.A.9

Letter - language of the publication; Two Arabic numerals - year of publication Roman numeral (+letter) - subject of the

publication or the issuing body www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/symbol1.htm

Arabic number - sequential number

Finding UN publications in print

Bodleian official UN depository since 1950

Official Papers Reading Room Check the library catalogue for the shelf

mark – most post 1990 sales publications are on the OLIS

Ask in Official Papers

LawBod

Official Papers,Radcliffe Camera

UN publications online Online – unlikely to find the full text

especially with older material

UNBisNet primarily 1979 on (a catalogue with links to full texts when available)

HeinOnline UN Law Collection v.g. for yearbooks, has other things too

Web site of the UN organisation which produced it

A/C.6/38/SR.73??

Hein has Summary Records of the General Assembly, Sixth Committee from 1st(1946) to 38th(1983) all published ie not 19(1964)

HeinOnline – United Nations Law Collection Library

Press Releases Advanced search option on press release

homepage http://www.un.org/apps/pressreleases/

allows you to search an archive of press releases back to October 1995

Index to Press Release Symbols via Help http://www.un.org/en/unpress/English_Symbols.html

UN Press Release website: advanced search

Select Choice of GA, SC,

ESC, Sec-Gen, Press

Conferences

Options vary to suit Select

choice eg GA options Plenary or each of 6

Committees

UN Documents – may require more chasing!

UN Documents Created by a UN body as part of its

own processes, primarily for internal use

Includes Official RecordsEg proceedings, resolutions, working

papers, decisions, reports

some are offered for sale, but this was not primary purpose

Basic Searching

http://www.un.org/en/

ODSUNBISNETUN-I-QUE

More about these soon

Browse

SimpleDrillDown

Documentation Centre

OK for more obvious, top level documents

http://www.un.org/en/documents/

Example 2005 World Summit Documents available just by drilling down

www.un.org/en/additions/index.shtml

Also possible shortcut if you are looking for a recent document

http://www.un.org/en/documents/

UN Document Symbols Unique identifier for precise searching

First Letter = parent organ After / either Letter (plus number) = subsidiary

organ Or Letters indicating type of document (e.g

resolution, report) Sequential number (sometimes year indicated) May also be suffixes indicating

revisions/additions to a document

UN Document examples A/52/100 – General Assembly document

from 52 session

S/1997/100 – Security Council document issued in 1997

E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/1 – document of the Sub Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Commission on Human Rights

www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/symbol.htm

Un-i-que Reference tool developed by the UN

Dag Hammarskjöld Library Searches for titles only Results are brief but include UN

document symbol Useful for searching for series /

recurrent publications (e.g. annual reports, irregular reports etc) – listed chronologically

http://lib-unique.un.org/lib/unique.nsf

Convert a title to a document symbol or a sales publication number

It really does pay to read the Search Tips first!

Search Tip : finding periodic report of country under HR obligation type

[Country name] – periodic – [keyword] * for variants Select Match ALL these words (Boolean AND)

Click on link

UN Documents in print Official Papers Reading Room

UN documents are NOT catalogued on OLIS

To find them you need the document number

Official records of the 4 main bodies (GA,SC,ESC, TC) Index to Proceedings

http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/resguide/itp.htm#itp

UN Documents online Full text often available

Resolutions from 1945 on? Other types from 1993 on

Databases to try ODS of the UN UNBisnet Web site of parent organisation

Official Document System

http://documents.un.org

ODS UN NY & Geneva

parliamentary dox 1993 – (inc. resolutions & decisions)

UN Vienna dox 1997- Selected earlier inc. Resolutions 1946- of

GA, SC, ESC & Trusteeship C

Sales publications Press releases Treaties Information Bulletins

from D of Public Information

ODS

Searching by document symbol is easy

Searching by subject is more difficult Older documents are being added all

the time Introduction to ODS (powerpoint)http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/

train.htm

Search by document number or for words in the full text. May not pick up all resolutions.

UN documents and resolutions. Search by document number, dates/sessions, using thesaurus or full text

Search viaSymbol

A/RES/55/2&

Change Truncation

ToNone

Navigating (huge) Lexicon – scroll down + click Next to drill down length of list

Drill down for text

Punctuation ie/ /

Not essential

Impact of “Search

Results By”If youRight

Truncate

ODS reads document symbols from L to RRight Truncate search will return all beginning with that character string

Sort by Symbol means the shortest string is top of results

Clicking underlined symbol links to screen with indexing information about the document & where you have choice oflanguages/formats for viewing the text

Advantage of Pdf

Document will be exactly as printed, with original formatting, reproducing all graphics, maps and annexes.

Navigating, downloading

functions usually top left of pdf

ODS Advanced Search

Advanced Search Screen is essential if you want to be sure of finding Resolutions

eg A/RES/34/180

First select a database

NB post 1993

resolutions are in

UN Documents

Subject thesaurus. To jump to the correct part of the alphabet type a few letters in the search box and then click Lexicon e.g. wom + click to find subject headings which start women

Left Truncation allows you to omit the first part of the Symbol – useful if you know you are

looking for a resolution but not sure if its from the General Assembly

(“A” first) or Security Council

(“S”)

Example: you want to find letters addressed to the Secretary General in 2007 relating to Iraq or a letter but don’t know exactly

In SymbolS/2007

&Symbol Truncation

- Right

Words of TitleIraq

Full Text SearchingIf you have no idea about UN Symbols

From both Simple and Advanced Search Screens

Use “Find any of the words” if your search term has many synonyms

Use the “Boolean Operators” option if you understand these

NOTE: Lots more information with examples available by clicking on the “Help” button in ODS.

Full text search:1. Choose from “Type of full text search”2. Enter terms in “Full text search box”.

Boolean connectors in ODS are • AND, OR, AND NOT, SENTENCE • * to truncate (e.g. child*)• ? Wildcard (e.d. wom?n)• Use brackets to group operators

No results???? A lot of search terms? try removing one

Try truncating words by using the asterisk character

Take care with spelling or use wild card ? “ru?d lub?ers”

ODS requires that you use hyphens and accents in searches when they are used in a document.

UNBisNet Primary online index 1979 - Bibliographic records for UN

documents and sales publications Link to full text where available Older items being added gradually

Links to full text resolutions 1946- Voting records for adopted resolutions

Security council 1946- General assembly 1983-

Citations to speeches 1983-

Search by keyword or browse for UN Documents, Resolutions, Sales Publications plus outside publications about the UN

Search by keyword or browse voting records

Search by keyword or browse index to speeches

http://unbisnet.un.org

Note: If searching by document symbol/sales number keep punctuation and slashes egE/CN.4/2000/42

UNBisNet Keyword Search Screen

Use AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms from more than one field

Use drop down to limit your search to particular document types (e.g. UN Docs only, Resolutions only etc)

Sort options

Click on title for full bibliographic details

Full text if available

Brief results screen

Links to full text if available

Clickable list of “Subject headings” – can be useful for searching for similar documents. If you click on the link you will be taken to (nearly) the correct part of the alphabetical list of subject headings. From here click on the link to view documents for each subject

Finds all documents from the particular body/ committee for the session. Clicking on the link will take you to the correct part of the numerical list of document numbers

Full results screen

Free e-Research guides

Am Soc International Lawhttp://www.asil.org/un1.cfm

Duke Law School UN guide @ http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/researchguides/un.html

Guides from the Dag Hammarskjold Library

http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/quick.htm

Still no luck?

http://www.unsystem.org/ gives links to the web sites of the main UN bodies. A document you have failed to find anywhere else might be posted on a subsidiary’s website

Just not available as e-resource?

The Official Papers Reading Room (Radcliffe Camera), its staff and paper resources will do their best to meet your request

official.papers@bodley.ox.ac.uk www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/official_papers

Term time: Mon-Fri 9.00-21.30, Sat 9.00-12.30 Vacation: Mon-Fri 9.00-18.30, Sat 9.00-12.30

Useful websites: News and current awareness

UN news - http://www.un.org/News/

The UN Chronicle (online edition) http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/

UN Pulse blog on new and recent UN documents - http://unhq-appspub-1.un.org/lib/dhlrefweblog.nsf

Daily Journal of the United Nations http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/En/lateste.pdf lists meetings, conferences, press conferences, new documents

UNIC Newsletter   http://www.unicwash.org/newsl/newsl.html

recent/forthcoming events, links to archived issues of special reports

Key printed reference works & indexes

The UN Today (BOD Off Papers O.UN/I.2008.6) Abbreviated online version at http://www.un.org/aboutun/untoday/ Yearbook of the United Nations (Internat 688 U50) up to 2005– has a subject indexEncyclopaedia of the United Nations (2003) 4 vols Internat 687 E56a3